Tuesday, 27 November 2012

I shall be hosting another VITAL CPD Teachshare on Thursday this week....

Spread a little 'appiness is the name of the session, which starts at 7pm. It will look at the use of apps in the classroom and beyond. A lot of teachers are making use of these apps in teaching, and also on fieldwork. There are hundreds of thousands of apps, and the chance to get some free software which performs a particular task well is one that a lot of teachers are taking.

There's also the chance to connect with learners using AirPlay mirroring - indeed many teachers are using an iPad instead of an IWB... The cost is a lot less of course and the result is something more adaptable... and you can play Angry Birds on it...

Sunday, 25 November 2012

Earlier this week, Paula Owens made me an offer that I couldn't refuse. I was asked if I wanted to become one of the GA's Primary Geography Champions.
The Geography Champions network grew out of the work carried out for the Action Plan for Geography, and I was present at the first meeting of the champions, at the RGS-IBG as I set up the NING to support their work.
There are some amazing colleagues who are Geography Champions, and I've enjoyed working with them on a range of projects over the years, as well as supporting the development of the NING.

There are now over 1400 members of the Geography Champions NING.
It has a search function which will allow you to find existing materials and resources.

I'd like to make an offer to any Primary schools that are in the area within 30 miles of Litcham in Norfolk. Let me know if I can support the development of geography within your school, or come and speak at an assembly about my book 'The Ice Man'... Also happy to head across the border into Suffolk or Cambridgeshire if appropriate...

If you live close to the North Norfolk coast, please contact my other Champion colleague Nell Seal.

Tuesday, 13 November 2012

It's tomorrow... what are you planning to do in your school or workplace ?
I'm going to be creating some new GIS resources for GIS Day.In the past I've attended various events around the country, while working at the GA, and there's a wealth of activity out there.

Here's a video about the day, and why GIS matters:

I'm going to be using the day to continue working on some materials for the OS MapStream service. These will add to the materials that I already produced, with Paula Owens, for the Digimap for Schoolsservice earlier in the year.

Monday, 12 November 2012

Over the last few months, we've been working hard to put together a deal which will connect The Geography Collective, creators of Mission:Explore with Discover the World, the leading school travel company to destinations such as Iceland.
We're going to be writing missions which will be available for students and teachers who book a tour with Discover the World...

The first place that we've visited is one of the great places in the world: ICELAND.

I'm working with geography teacher John Sayers, and our editor and illustrator Helen and Tom, along with other Geography Collective colleagues, to put together a booklet which will available to all those schools that book a trip with Discover the World. It will contain missions, and ideas for linking the experience of visiting Iceland and completing the missions with the curriculum, and exam specifications.

We've created a whole load of missions which we're now editing down and preparing to be released into the wild in early 2013.

I'll let you know more about how things are developing with the project over the next couple of months, and look forward to seeing some of you soon on a windswept sandur, or cramponing over a crevasse-strewn glacier...

There are a small number of people out there, however, who summon up very different images when they think about geography learning. Maybe they never experienced traditional geography education, or maybe they experienced it and have completely rejected it as a model for learning. They envision activities that feel both relevant and enjoyable. These are the people we need to find and listen to, because they don't think about improving geography education by incrementally improving traditional approaches. They think about completely new approaches to geography teaching and learning.

One place where you can find people like that is in the Geography Collective, a group of innovative thinkers in the United Kingdom. They describe themselves in the following way: "We are a collective of geography activists, teachers, therapists, academics, artists, and guerrillas. We've come together to encourage [young] people to see our world in new ways."

The Geography Collective is one of the most creative groups in geography education today, and every time I learn more about its work, I get more excited about it.....

I can't help feeling that truly creative approaches to geography learning are discouragingly few and far between right now. Too few people are even thinking about geography education, and those who are still focus too much on incremental improvements rather than entirely new approaches. We should take the Geography Collective members and others like them as inspiration. We must challenge ourselves to think more creatively and seek out and promote the creative ideas of others.